Last time I wrote I said that I was planning to create a tiny, inexpensive Ruby testing course and then launch it to my relatively small subscriber list. Since that time I did in fact start building a course. I actually got maybe about 90% of the way done. But then I decided my course was dumb and confusing so I started over. Now I’m at about the 90% mark with the new version of the course.

I got far enough with the new version of the course that I felt comfortable committing to a launch date. The date I picked is Monday, July 23rd, 2018.

My plans between now and July 23rd are:

• Finish the course material
• Finish the course’s sales page (already 95% done)
• Write several ebombs so I can provide free value before I ask subscribers to buy something
• Put together an email launch sequence

My plan is that the launch sequence will consist of at least 5 emails, most of which will contain an ebomb or link to an ebomb. The first of the 5 emails will go out on Monday, July 23rd, notifying subscribers that the course is now available for purchase and will be through Friday night. The last email will go out that Friday, letting subscribers know that the course will no longer be available after Friday night. The emails in between will mostly just contain ebombs.

In other news, I finally made it to the round number of 250 subscribers. Here’s what my subscriber graph looks like:

As is labeled in the graph, the big spike is from when I got featured in Ruby Weekly. You can see that my flow of new subscribers really slowed down in mid spring. Part of the reason for the slowdown was that I got sidetracked by other, more pressing work during that period. Another part of the reason is that I chose to stop focusing on ebombs in favor of creating the course material. I also spent a non-trivial amount of time getting my podcast up and running.

The main thing I care about at this point is selling more than $0 worth of the course on my July 23-27 launch. After that we’ll see what happens. If my sales are abysmal, that probably means something is wrong with my offer or the way I did the launch, and I need to address that. If sales are fine, then the logical next step would be to go get more subscribers and then launch again.